


if wishes came true, it would've been you

by kindclaws



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Exes, F/M, Happy Ending, Non-Chronological, Teacher-Student Relationship, but like lovingly y'know, pretentious academia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: Bellamy and Clarke stumbled into love in his third semester of teaching, and if he’s really honest, he thinks they both knew it was doomed from the start.Six years later she’s back at his university as the new Modern Arts professor being a total pain in the ass, and he can't help but wonder if they could try again.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 33
Kudos: 149
Collections: Bellarke Secret Santa 2020





	if wishes came true, it would've been you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadprose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadprose/gifts).



> HAPPY HOLIDAYS, SADPROSE/SEEDAYLIGHT! *confetti*  
> and to the rest of you I guess <3
> 
> Seedaylight requested a professors au where they have a kind of rivalry but eventually they figure it out and a student teases Ancient Civilizations prof Bellamy if the new Modern Arts prof is his girlfriend. They're also a big Taylor Swift fan so I listened to the recent albums in the hopes it'd give some fun inspiration for them, and then illicit affairs made me go totally off the rails and I asked them if it was okay if I made bellarke exes in this and they enabled me and the end result is... this. *smacks forehead* Hope you enjoy! Title from the 1 instead of illicit affairs tho, because we deserve happy endings in 2020
> 
> Story's told in non-chronological order, you can read it in the order I've put the scenes in or follow the roman numerals for actual chronological order, up to you!

**#**

**vii.**

  
“The rumours are true.”

Bellamy looks up from the buffet table to find both Monty and Jasper from the chemistry department staring at him with identical expressions of barely-restrained humour. They’re hardly half an hour into the opening of a brand new student center, and Jasper’s already lost his tie - Bellamy thinks it might be a record. 

“What?” Bellamy asks. 

“Fine Arts got a new prof,” Monty explains, and Jasper leans against the buffet table, crossing his arms and peering out over the gala with an air of mock dignity. “We’ve been begging for funding for new lab equipment for three years and they got budget approval for a new prof just like that.”

“I see where this is going, and I don’t like it,” Bellamy warns them. 

“Bellamy, the rivalry between stem and humanities is a long standing tradition,” Jasper says, flinging his arm around Bellamy’s neck and tugging him down to his level. “We _have_ to chirp them for it.”

“You do realize, of course, exactly where Ancient Civilizations lies on that spectrum?” Bellamy asks dryly. 

“Does this mean you’re not going to tell us how to win over the deans so we can get funding too?” Monty asks. 

“Well,” Bellamy says, turning his attention back to the platter of cold cuts on the buffet table. “It might help if you stopped making things explode in the lab.”

“Nope,” Jasper says, just as Monty says. “Can’t do.”

“Everyone who wants to major in chemistry is at least a little bit of a pyromaniac, deep down,” Monty says with alarming frankness. “Some of us hide it better than others, but we all want to let out the mad scientist every once in a while. If you _don’t_ make something blow up in the first month of introductory chemistry, the students get confused. They start doubting themselves, they hear from their dormmates who are majoring in Shakespeare that they just have to write an essay every two weeks instead of attending 8 hours of labs a week, and next thing you know they’re all transferring and Fine Arts gets their budget increased!”

“So you see, stopping the explosions would actually work against us,” Jasper concludes. “Also, I don’t want to - ”

“There she is!” Monty interrupts, grabbing Bellamy’s arm. 

He looks up, and forgets to breathe, because even across the room, even six years after she walked away, Bellamy would recognize Clarke Griffin in an instant. She’s resplendent in a red cocktail dress and matching lipstick, and she must have heard Monty exclaim, because she raises her head and looks directly at them. 

“Oh god, we’ve been spotted,” Jasper says. “ _Oh god_ , she’s walking over here.”

Bellamy hears them banter as though from far underwater, his ears ringing. It feels like Clarke’s walk across the room takes simultaneously just a few seconds, and an eternity. Either way, she stops right in front of Bellamy, and he’s not ready. 

“They have your favourite,” she tells him, lifting her little party plate and shaking it at him.

“What?” Bellamy asks dumbly, still unnerved by how bright her eyes are. He’d convinced himself over the years that was just his fond memory making every detail more vivid, but no, she really looks like that still, solid and sure in front of him.

“Fancy supermarket cheddar,” Clarke says, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “You know, the reason you come to these sorts of things?” He finally registers the little cubes of cheese on her plate with toothpicks sticking out of them and he almost wants to laugh as he remembers her draped in gold, on a very different night more than 6 years ago. He swallows it down. 

“It turns out I’m lactose-intolerant,” he says stiffly, and Clarke’s half-smile fades. Fuck. Fuck. He hates small talk. If the university hadn’t promised them snacks to attend the opening of the brand new student center, he would not be here wanting the ground to swallow him up. 

"You guys know each other?" Jasper asks, looking between them. 

"Not well," Bellamy says hastily, just as Clarke says "I was his - " she breaks off with a flash of pain on her face that is gone so quickly Bellamy convinces himself he imagined it. Clarke swallows. "His student. A long time ago."

“So you’re the new Modern Arts prof,” Monty says, smoothly stepping in when it becomes clear neither Bellamy nor Clarke have anything else to say. “Before we get into faculty rivalries, I want to say welcome, because I’m not going to be able to say that after the charity volleyball tournament.”

“What game?” Clarke asks, angling her body to face Monty and all but locking Bellamy out of the conversation. 

“The faculties pair up to form teams and we all attempt to play volleyball to raise money for local causes - “

“Which do not, unfortunately, include the chemistry department,” Jasper interrupts, much to Clarke’s confusion.

“ - the students will donate to make us wear stupid costumes and we really play up the faculty rivalries, but English Lit and Law have been wiping the floor with us for three years in a row, mostly because they have Roan - “

“Chemistry is paired with Nursing this year though,” Jasper says quickly. “So we might actually stand a chance; every Nursing prof I’ve ever met could benchpress me.” Bellamy takes a step back, hoping to gracefully vanish before this gets even more painful, but he doesn’t make it far.

“Bellamy’s playing too,” Monty says, grabbing his elbow and hauling him back to Clarke’s side with surprising strength. 

“What?” Bellamy hisses. 

“Volleyball,” Monty supplies with a significant look. “I already signed you up. You don’t have a choice.”

“Oh, god,” Bellamy says. 

“I’ll join,” Clarke says, raising her chin with a look of determination and defiance that Bellamy knows all too well. “Where do I sign up?”

Bellamy finally manages to slip away as Monty’s telling her the details. He’s suddenly not feeling up to sticking around to listen to any speeches about the deans’ hopes for the upcoming school year, yada yada yada, and he’s about to leave when he can’t help but look over his shoulder, at least once. 

Clarke is looking over her shoulder back at him, her pale face somber and unreadable. Bellamy looks away first, his cheeks burning.

**i.**

The first time he meets Clarke, it’s 9am, he’s hungover (like probably half the students), and the air conditioning in the history building is broken _again_ , so the air inside the auditorium is stifling. 

Bellamy manages to follow along his slides for that lecture with what he thinks is a valiant effort. If it isn’t, very few of his students seem awake enough to notice. The Friday 9am slot is his least attended lecture - a consequence, of course, of being his department’s newest hire - he gets the shittiest schedule. It’s fine. He knows he can make up for it in his other two lectures and usually leaves Fridays for review.

There’s one face in the stands Bellamy doesn’t recognize. His gaze keeps returning to her as he speaks, not because he’s struck by the intensity of her gaze all the way from 6 rows back or the glare of the florescent lights off the bright gold of her hair. Just because she seems like the only person in the auditorium who’s wide awake. The rest of them are dreaming and she’s blazing with life. Bellamy’s sure he would have remembered her, if she were in his previous lectures. You don’t forget a face like that. 

She raises her hand in the middle of a segue onto an interesting archaeological dig he’s found some photos of and a ripple of activity passes through the students around her. Bellamy suppresses a smirk as he sees them guiltily shift in their seats, trying to appear more attentive as they notice someone putting them to shame. He tells her to save her question until the end because he’s behind schedule and he’s not sure he can get through all these slides, and she lowers her hand with a frown that seems excessive. 

It’s like, 9:45am and he woke up too late to grab a coffee. He’s trying his best.

At 9:52 he notices he’s out of time and quickly dismisses the class. Bellamy ignores the shuffle of feet and chairs squeaking against the floor in favour of packing his laptop and notebooks away. He desperately needs breakfast. Then something for his hangover, and then a coffee, probably. He’s not picky on the order. 

The new student catches up to him in the hallway aside. 

“Professor Blake!” she calls out breathlessly, dodging around slower walkers to keep pace with him. “Professor Blake, I’m Clarke Griffin.” She sticks out her hand and Bellamy is forced to stop and shake it. 

“Good to meet you,” he says. He keeps walking, but she remains undeterred, following at his heels.

“I just got into your class,” she begins. “It took a while to convince the department to accept my transfer credits, but I’m here now, I read the first three weeks of readings, I borrowed some notes from - “

“Sounds like you don’t need me,” Bellamy says with a wan smile. He opens a door and gives her an expectant look.

“Well, I have some questions,” Clarke says, raising her chin stubbornly. “Today you claimed the pottery shards found at the site were functional, rather than works of art, because of the - “

“ - the chemical residue found on them, yes - “ His head is pounding even worse now. He definitely should not have trusted Monty’s new recipe.

“Why couldn’t they be both?” she asks, physically stepping in front of his way to stop him in his tracks. Bellamy blinks blearily at her. He’s starving, he’s sweaty, he’s craving a coffee so badly he’s probably going to abuse his faculty privileges and skip the line of cranky students at the campus cafe. He can’t deal with this today. 

“I give you permission to skip ahead to the Indus River Valley reading in week 9,” he says. “Then get back to me.”

He steps around her, and mercifully, she leaves him alone.

On Sunday, he gets an email from cgriffin. 

_Dear Professor Blake,_

_Although the reading on the agricultural techniques of the Indus River Valley Civilization was fascinating, I unfortunately fail to see the connection between it and the question I raised about the comparison of art and function in your last lecture, seeing as the reading lacked any mention of art at all._

_Looking forward to an enlightening explanation,_

_Clarke Griffin_

Ah. Always nice to see the younglings mastering the art of the polite 'fuck you' email so quickly. Bellamy grins and sets his marking aside to reply to her. 

_Hi Clarke,_

_You’re right, the reading had nothing to do with your question, which is a very good one, by the way._

_I really wanted a coffee and knew distracting you would buy me time to think of an answer. You might have noticed the syllabus left some flex room in the last week of the course for interesting topics brought up by students. We’ll address it then._

_Blake._

He thinks for a while, and then adds _Sent from my Blackberry_ even though he’s on a desktop because he thinks it’ll make her mad.

**iii.**

It takes Bellamy about 60 seconds after arriving to Clarke’s first gallery to realize that he has terribly misjudged the dress code. He spent 45 minutes in front of the mirror smoothing out non-existent wrinkles in his suit - a step up in formality from his usual wardrobe on campus, since he usually teaches in just a dress shirt - when he could have just gotten an undercut and an outrageously patterned dress shirt and called it a day. 

_Artists_. 

Anyway. It’s not like he’s here to impress anyone.

He ducks out of the way of a gaggle of senior students with plunging necklines and thinly-concealed airs of nervousness and excitement, and wanders along the perimeter of the installation, occasionally stopping to nod thoughtfully at paintings until he finds one with Clarke’s name next to it. 

He tilts his head and considers. It looks like two hands, one flesh, one bone, reaching for each other across a span of muted blues, the fingertips just failing to touch. 

“I’m sorry about the lack of fancy cheese,” a familiar voice says at his side, making Bellamy jump. Clarke’s smile grows, crinkling her eyes. She’s holding a piece of cheese on a toothpick out to him. 

“Uh,” Bellamy says, glancing back and forth between her and the cheese. There’s a lot more eyeshadow around her eyes than there usually is, making them look so sharp it’s hard to meet her gaze, and she’s wearing a slinky golden dress with little hair ornaments woven into her braid that look just like a laurel crown, and it seems unfair of her, really, to show up dressed like she’s just walked out of every dream he’s ever had and expect him to be able to speak coherent sentences.

“You said you were coming for the wine and fancy cheese, right?” she says. “Well, there’s no wine - you would have pre-drunk like the rest of us if you were smart - and the fancy cheese is supermarket cheddar with a toothpick stabbed into it, but…”

“I’ll try to contain my disappointment,” Bellamy says, struggling not to grin like a fool at her. He takes the cheese and pops it into his mouth. 

Yep. Supermarket cheddar.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come,” Clarke continues, and even though she’s still smiling there’s something serious behind her eyes. 

“Well, don’t tell the others, but you’re my favourite student,” Bellamy says. She looks away, her cheeks going pink. Bellamy gestures widely at the painting in front of them. “So uh, what’s… what’s your inspiration? I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting modern art, I thought you’d be one of those realism painters.”

“I got into modern art because it pissed off my mom,” Clarke admits. “She always said if I was going to throw my talents away on art, it should at least be something technically impressive. But… it’s more freeing to be abstract. Anyway,” she says, looking up at him with twinkling eyes. “I got the idea for this series from your syllabus.”

“What?”

“The way you talk about people back then… they’re like us,” Clarke says, looking like she’s struggling to put it into words. “History repeats itself. But not just the wars, the grand stuff. People leaving home and missing their family, people falling in love for the first time, people thinking they’re the first ones in the universe to feel a certain way…” her voice goes soft as she trails off. “It all repeats. And it’ll repeat after us.” 

Bellamy follows her gaze to the little info card next to the painting. Instead of a title, there’s simply a quote he recognizes. 

_Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time - Sappho._

It hits him somewhere in the chest, between his ribs, in the same place that first hurt when he was six years old and hanging onto every word of his mother’s stories, begging for just one more tale from her worn myth anthologies. 

He looks at Clarke with a lump in his throat and she’s ephemeral under the gallery’s golden lights, every breath and minute movement she makes sending ripples of reflected light through her dress. Her smile is a little uncertain as she waits for him to say something, and Bellamy can’t think of anything appropriate, because she’s his student and he should definitely not be feeling like she’s just plunged her hand into his chest and found his heart just because she put into words - and paint - the emotion that’s kept him going all his life. 

Before he can say anything, a stranger comes up to Clarke and grabs her arm. 

“Come on, we’re doing a group photo,” the new arrival says. She gives Bellamy a dismissive look. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” he says quietly. 

Clarke looks like she wants to say something else, but her friend is tugging insistently at her. Bellamy smiles to let her know it’s okay. 

“Bye, Mr Blake,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”

He watches her out of the corner of his eye the rest of the evening, hears her laugh echoing around the room, but she’s always surrounded by her classmates, by friends and admirers. Which is how it should be. Her work is - _amazing_. He wants to see her celebrated. He wanders between her paintings, reading each placard and staring at her brushstrokes until he’s dizzy. He sees her thesis weaving in and out of every one. 

_Time was not passing, it was turning in a circle - Gabriel García Márquez_ is geometric and painted in the shades of a sunrise, the phases of the moon painted in black in an infinity loop in the center.

He stands in front of _One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw - Vincent Van Gogh_ for a long time, his eyes tracing the veins of leaves etched into thick layers of paint.

_You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another - Mary Oliver_ is the brightest one, vivid and ecstatic where the others are pastel. 

It’s raining outside when he leaves the gallery. The sound of laughter and soft music follows him out the door for a moment, and his shadow stretches out across the steps of the convocation hall in a cage of warm light before the door swings shut and it gets very quiet. He stares across the street at the physics building and is suddenly very afraid he’s never going to meet anyone like Clarke Griffin again.

**vi.**

Clarke breaks up with him on a Tuesday. 

The first sign that something is wrong is that she comes into his office, at the tail end of his office hours. She never does that - they meet off-campus, in his car, with hushed voices, away from any curious eyes. 

“Cla - Miss Griffin,” Bellamy corrects himself. “Can I help you?”

She closes the door behind her. Underneath her pristine makeup, her eyes are a little red. 

“Bellamy,” she says quietly. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Oh,” is all he can say. He understands what she means immediately, and it never occurs to him to fight. He never wanted to think too deeply about it, not when the world didn’t seem to touch them when they were alone together, but he always knew they were walking a dangerous path. 

“I came out as bi in high school,” Clarke tells him. “And I was dating a guy at the time, so everyone kept asking me why I’d done it, when I could have kept quiet. And I didn’t know how to explain it then and maybe I still don’t but I don’t - I never want to feel like any relationship of mine is shameful. And I love you, Bellamy, I do - “ she breaks off, her voice cracking. 

“Hell of a time to tell me,” Bellamy says, giving her a hollow smile. 

“I don’t want to be a secret anymore,” Clarke says hardly above a whisper. “I don’t want to be something to hide.”

“I get it,” Bellamy says. He rubs hard at his temples, feeling a headache coming on that might have something to do with the lump in his throat and the sudden pressure behind his eyes. She looks like she’s about to fall apart in his office. He’s not going to cry in front of her and add his own heartbreak on her shoulders. 

“So that’s it?” Clarke asks. 

“If you’re sure,” Bellamy says. She stands behind his desk for a while, staring mutely at him, before running around it and flinging herself into his arms. He gathers her close and holds her tightly, even as her shoulders shake, even as he feels a few teardrops soak his neck where she’s buried her face, and he does not want to let go. Screw it all, he wants to run away with her. 

But that’s not - that’s a pipe dream. That was never an option. 

She pulls away and kisses his cheek, and Bellamy reluctantly loosens his grip. She stands, straightens out her sweater and wipes at a smear of mascara at the corner of her eye, and then she’s gone. 

There’s a clipping in his bag from the school newspaper of that group photo she and her cohort took at their first art gallery at convocation hall. Clarke’s front and center, her smile stretching from ear to ear, and even in black and white she looks utterly radiant. Bellamy takes it out and locks it in the bottom drawer. 

He doesn’t hear from her again the rest of the semester. He notes her graduation date with a terrible sense of finality, and one day he wakes up and realizes she's really gone. She's not coming back to Arkadia University.

**ii.**

“Professor Blake!”

Bellamy turns away from the cafe counter, coffee in hand, to scan the tables for the source of the familiar voice. 

He’s only half-surprised to see Clarke Griffin waving at him from one of the booths. He checks his watch out of habit, but really, he’s got nothing but marking scheduled for the afternoon, so he picks his way across the crowded cafe floor to her, stepping over backpacks and a sprawled out service dog. He’s amazed to see her apparently trying to study in the middle of all this activity and background noise.

“How can you study here?” he asks, looking askance at the textbooks and notes she has strewn across the table. He tilts his head to examine the nearest paper. She has the exact sort of handwriting he would expect from someone who reads all the assigned readings and then chases down their professor with extra questions. 

“I like the white noise,” she says. “My roommate’s nocturnal, so the house is too quiet. Anyway - I was just about to email you a question about the presentation we have to do next week? Do we have a time limit?”

“I think we’ve covered enough material in the course so far that you can scrounge up 5 minutes of content,” Bellamy says mildly. 

“No, a maximum time limit,” Clarke says impatiently. “Because I’ve got like, 20.”

“It’s a class of 120 people, Miss Griffin,” Bellamy says. “Try to be reasonable.”

She laughs at that, and it’s a beautiful sight. Bellamy catches himself looking at the line of her neck as she throws her head back and forces himself to look away. 

“Yeah, it’s not one of my strong suits. Do you want to sit?” she asks, gesturing at the other side of the booth. 

He should not. He should not. He should not. 

“Sure,” Bellamy says, and he tries not to read into her smile as she tidies up some of her papers to make room on the table for him. He notices shadows on her hands and reaches out before he can stop himself. Clarke goes still as he turns her palm over and examines the blue and purple streaks between her fingers. 

“You paint?” he asks softly. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Fine Arts major. You’re not going to kick me out of the class for not being a history major?”

Bellamy lets go of her hand and takes a long sip of his coffee to center himself. 

“I’m sure I’ll eventually get over the disappointment that one of my best students is only attending my class as a side hustle.”

“I like history,” she says hastily. “But I’ve been an artist all my life. If there was a chance that I could make it, I needed to try.”

“I get it,” Bellamy says quietly, his chest suddenly tight with pride. This feels familiar, in a way. “I think you can make it.”

“Well, I’ve got my first gallery in two weeks,” Clarke says with a nervous laugh. “So I guess I’ll find out then if I’m a total failure and I should switch majors.” 

“Two weeks?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that big of a deal, the Fine Arts department is just hosting an internal thing in the convocation hall for some of the senior students, but - “

“I’ll be there,” Bellamy says. 

“Really?” Clarke asks, wide-eyed. “You don’t have to - “

“There will be wine and fancy cheese, right? That’s what you artist types eat?”

This time she laughs so loud that heads turn across the cafe to look at them. Bellamy abruptly remembers himself and hastily leans back in the booth. 

“I should go,” he says awkwardly. “Essays to mark, emails to read.”

“Thanks,” Clarke says, though he’s really not sure what she’d be thanking him for. Bellamy makes the mistake of looking back at her face as he stands with his coffee, and her eyes are a startling shade of blue he’s never been able to appreciate when she’s sitting 6 rows back in his auditorium.

“I’ll be there,” Bellamy repeats, his mouth dry.

**viii.**

In those first few weeks after she returns, if someone had sat Bellamy down and told him Clarke did it to orchestrate a grand conspiracy to ruin his life, Bellamy would have believed it. 

On the first day of class, he pulls up to his usual parking spot on campus just in time to see her locking her car and striding off - and would you believe it, it’s parked in _his_ spot. He drives around another 10 minutes looking for a free spot and is late to his first lecture. 

Then the room that he always books for study hall for his students is taken - and there are other rooms on campus, sure, but this one is the best, especially on early September afternoons when the sun is coming in through the trees outside the window just right, and the quiet transports his students to another time. When he looks up her office and stops by to confront her about it, she tells him she can’t just book a room with artificial lighting like he can, and her voice is distant and a little cold.

Then they have the interfaculty volleyball game, and _of course_ his team is eliminated in their first game against the Fine Arts and Music team. They might have made a valiant defense but Clarke spikes a ball directly into his face, and Bellamy’s not sure it’s an accident. She does sit with him on the bleachers as he pinches the bridge of his nose to try to stem his bleeding nose, but she doesn’t speak, so he doesn’t either. They must look like a fine pair of fools sitting on the sidelines, him in a blood-stained toga and her in neon 80s workout gear.

He misses her. He misses how easy it used to be to talk to her. 

The worst part is how seamlessly she inserts herself into his life. She shows up at the faculty potlucks and wins everyone over with a cheesy spinach dip that seems like a pointed choice to Bellamy. She makes fast friends with Monty and Jasper, and Lincoln from Fine Arts and Miller from English Lit and Raven from engineering, and in less than a month she’s at trivia night at their favourite pub with them, having apparently made it her mission to unseat Bellamy from the top of the leaderboard. (They’re tied for 2 straight months, neither of them managing to make enough headway to gain the lead. It’s infuriating.) 

People start noticing, too, that there’s a weird amount of hostility between them and that they won’t even look at each other in group settings. Monty’s the first to express concern, but all it takes is Bellamy muttering “fuck Clarke Griffin” while reading a coolly polite email from her over their room booking disputes during study hall, and his students latch onto it like they latch onto every little tidbit he grudgingly reveals about his personal life - like piranhas. 

He makes the decision to sneak into one of her lectures entirely on impulse. He stops at the gift section in the campus bookstore just long enough to buy a baseball cap with an obnoxiously large Arkadia University logo on it and slips in at the tail end of a flood of students. One student looks askance at him as he slips into the very last row at the back of the auditorium, where the lights are dim and the shadow cast over his face by the baseball cap should be enough to hide him from Clarke’s view. 

He doesn’t register the question at the beginning of her lecture, too distracted by how comfortable she looks down there at the front of the class, how sure of herself she seems. And despite the bitterness that’s taken hold of him lately because they don’t fit together like they used to, he feels a wave of pride for her. 

“…consider even the way we display modern art in galleries and museums,” Clarke says as he tunes in. “Raise your hand if you have ever attended a modern art instillation that didn’t have bright white walls, harsh lighting, and uncomfortable seating. No, I didn’t think it’d be many of you. We’ve gotten used to experiencing modern art in an utterly sterile context that’s separate from, well, human life. It’s no wonder most people don’t understand it. You have to really _want_ to understand to get over the initial hostility! This is something we need to change.”

The student next to Bellamy who looked at him weirdly when he sneaked in is now watching anime on his laptop. Bellamy resists the urge to slam his laptop lid shut and tell him to pay attention. He feels oddly breathless, listening to Clarke. He feels like she’s saying something important. 

“Because modern art is not a sterile, dead thing,” she continues, gesturing with her hands as she gets worked up. “It's organic, it's loving. It’s an expression of emotion that’s not confined by any of the rules of traditional art, and it’s not some new invention. We’ve had modern art as long as we’ve had children drawing in the sand with sticks, and it does us a disservice to pretend modern art only exists in one era. We make the mistake of removing it from time and from ourselves, and we see it as the _opposite_ of traditional art, the _opposite_ of the past. They can exist together. They already do, in the grand scheme of things, along the timeline of human expression. Are there any questions?”

And Bellamy thinks of Clarke under Christmas lights, grinning at him with a paintbrush in hand, saying _maybe in another three thousand years, people will look at our modern art the same way they look at your black-figure amphoras._

And he realizes he has never stopped loving her, not really. Not even after six years.

**iv.**

Bellamy gets absolutely zero warning before Roan’s face looms over him - one second, he’s staring at the ceiling of one of the campus workout rooms and focusing on keeping his breathing steady as he lifts weights, the next, Roan’s sharp and kind of judgemental face is squinting down at him, his lips moving soundlessly over Bellamy’s music. He lets out an undignified yelp and nearly drops the barbell on his chest. Roan catches it before his arms can fold under the weight and helps him lift it up and out of the way. 

Roan’s lips move again. Bellamy sits up and tears his headphones out of his ears. 

“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he says. 

“Why are you still in town?” Roan asks, squinting suspiciously at him. 

Bellamy blinks. “I… live here,” he answers slowly. 

“You don’t have family to visit?” Roan asks. Bellamy doesn’t know Roan well - he knows he teaches Russian literature or something, he’d once lent Bellamy his flask at an outrageously boring orientation meeting, and their workout schedules roughly overlap, but they’re not like, _friends_. This seems like a weird line of questioning.

“Not this year,” he says, leaving it at that.

“Perfect,” Roan says. “I’m hosting New Year’s. I’ll email you the details. Any allergies?”

“What?”

“I’m hosting New Year’s,” Roan repeats, tilting his head in frustration. “For faculty and students still on campus for the holidays. You should come.”

“Do I get a choice?”

“Nope.”

Which is how Bellamy ends up on Roan’s porch at about 9pm on New Year’s Eve, holding a bottle of tequila and morbidly curious about what Roan’s definition of a party is.

Roan opens the door wearing a silk shirt that’s unbuttoned halfway down his chest and glittery sunglasses with the letters NYE emblazoned on them, which, all right, that’s a statement. There’s a non-zero chance he’s going to end up on the university’s facebook meme page with the caption #king. Roan smiles his usual shark-like smile when he spots Bellamy, and smiles even wider when Bellamy hands him the bottle of tequila. 

“For me? Mr Blake, you shouldn’t have!” Roan exclaims, sounding like he doesn’t mean it at all. 

“Happy New Year’s,” Bellamy says, stuffing his hands into his pockets and hesitating on the doorstep, wondering if he should take the sight of Roan’s half bared pecs as an omen for the rest of the night, but then there’s another face peering curiously over his shoulder, and - oh, that’s Trina, that’s one of his international students.

“Professor Blake!” Trina exclaims, and hands reach out to grab at his coat and pull him in, and Bellamy’s fate is sealed. He’s shooed down the hall into a dining room with folding tables set up with offensively vivid tablecloths. “Sit with me and Pascal!” Trina says, already tugging him to one of the few empty seats left, and Bellamy has little choice but to sit. “You’re just in time, we’re about to eat.”

“No way, Mr Blake?” another voice chimes in and Bellamy looks over to find Roma, who TA-ed for him in his first semester, grinning lopsidedly at him. “How’s it hanging?”

“That’s apple juice, right?” Bellamy says mildly, nodding at her red solo cup. 

“Absolutely, professor,” she says a little too cheerfully. “Just staying hydrated.”

“You’re what, 25? You act like such an old man,” Trina says. He’s 27, and genuinely not sure if he should be offended or not. “Relax, Professor! Today, we are all strays.” 

“Strays, huh?” Bellamy asks, his gaze slipping past her and over to Roan, who’s emerging from the kitchen with two massive salad bowls. He does a double take when a familiar figure follows at his heels, balancing a stack of plates. 

As if she’s felt his gaze on her, Clarke’s head jerks up and she glances around the room until their eyes meet. Her surprised and delighted smile suddenly makes Bellamy warm. He tears his attention away from her and back to a playful argument Roma and Pascal are having with great difficulty, but it’s not long before he’s laughing along with the rest of them. From Trina, he learns that Roan does this every year with a handful of single faculty members and students who can’t or won’t be celebrating with family, because travel is too expensive or there's no happy home waiting for them at the end of the trip.

He looks up a few times over dinner when conversation on the other side of the room spikes, wondering what Clarke is doing here. She’s seated between a very elderly woman Bellamy thinks teaches in Engineering, and a librarian he vaguely recognizes. She looks up from whatever spirited debate they’re having once or twice and gives him a warm smile, but it’s not until Roan calls for help bringing in the plates that Bellamy sees an opportunity to say hi. He jumps at the chance and carries his table’s dirty dishes into the kitchen just after her. 

“Hey,” he says, joining her by the sink. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know,” Clarke says, waving a hand dismissively. “Mom has a new boyfriend and it’s weird for everyone involved so I’m letting them have a romantic holiday on their own.”

“Ah,” Bellamy says delicately. “Been there.”

“Yeah?” Clarke asks, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Yeah,” Bellamy says quietly. “It’s good to see you, though.” _It’s always good to see you._

She has dimples when she smiles. It’s going to be the death of him. 

“So how’d I do on the exam?” she asks. 

“Who says I’m done marking?” Bellamy retorts. Clarke tilts her head and gives him an exasperated look he usually sees directed at her discussion partners, not him. “All right, yeah, I finished marking,” he says. He flipped through the whole pile of them to read hers first and he lingered on every one of her meticulously-chosen words, hearing them in her voice. “Your arguments were unorthodox but very well-articulated.”

“I’ll take it,” Clarke says cheerfully, just as Roan comes back into the kitchen and chases them out for dessert. 

The excitement builds as the clock on the mantle keeps ticking. Just before midnight as Roan is shaking a bottle of champagne and everyone is yelling warnings that he doesn’t seem inclined to listen to, Bellamy catches sight of a flash of blonde hair slipping out of the room. He slips out in the chaos and sees her retreating back turn the corner at the end of the hall. He hears the backyard door slide open and closed. 

Bellamy follows without thinking but hesitates at the doorway. Through the glass he can see Clarke standing in her socks in the snow on the deck, her head tilted up at the sky. He can’t tell from behind if this is a moment he should intrude on or if she’d even want him of all people. 

It’s hard to not be home for the holidays. Sometimes it’s even harder when you catch yourself enjoying it. He’s been there. 

But he needs to make sure she’s okay, just in case. Clarke startles a little as he slides the door open and steps out into the backyard with her, but to Bellamy’s relief she smiles softly at him. 

“You all right?” he asks. “I can go, if you want to be alone at midnight.”

“No,” Clarke says. “I mean, no, don’t go. Come here.”

“Are you okay then?” Bellamy says. 

“I am. I just wanted a moment of quiet,” Clarke says, but when she catches him looking back at the door, she reaches out and takes his hand to stop him from leaving. Her fingers are cold and very small against his. Bellamy holds her hand tightly to try to sink some warmth into it and holds his breath until his vision starts going dark at the edges. He has the bizarre notion that if he exhales, he’ll break something, or he’ll wake up, or she’ll realize what an incredibly stupid idea this is.

Later, he’ll think to himself that was the point of no return - just holding her hand. 

They hear a chorus of voices rise up from inside the house counting down from 10. 

At 6, Clarke turns to him and says, “You know, it’s good luck to kiss someone at midnight.” There’s no trace of teasing in her voice, just the usual Clarke Griffin brand of absolute certainty. "And I'm technically not your student anymore."

Bellamy’s racing thoughts screech to a halt. 

“Clarke - “ he says helplessly. The champagne bottle pops so loudly they hear it outside, followed by a wave of muffled cheers. Over the treetops a few blocks over, there are further pops as someone sets off a few cheap candle fireworks.

“If you don’t want me,” she says in a rush, “If I’ve horribly misread this, tell me now and I’ll leave you alone and we’ll pretend I never said anything. But if I’m right - if you - “

He kisses her.

**ix.**

Bellamy’s leg bounces impatiently as he sits in the hall outside the Fine Arts offices, but he thinks he does a pretty good job, otherwise, of suppressing his nerves as he waits for the end of Clarke’s office hours. He carefully opens the lid on the box in front of him several times to check on the cake inside, mostly to give himself something to do, until the last student walks out past him. Then he stands and makes his way down the hall until he finds the placard labeled C. Griffin. 

Clarke is standing with her back to him, pulling on a scarf and coat. Bellamy balances the cake in one hand and raps his knuckles against the open doorframe. 

“Sorry, office hours are over, you’ll have to - “ she starts to say, and falls silent with a quiet gasp as she turns and spots him. 

Bellamy spent days brainstorming something intelligent to say right now, something that would reach across the gap of time between them and make her smile and remember how easy they used to be together. 

Instead, all that comes out is “Do you still like chocolate?”

She stares at him guardedly for a moment. 

“What kind of trick question is that? Of course I still like chocolate.”

He sets the cake box down on her desk and she stares at it as though it is a trap. It’s not, because he’s trying to fix things, not ruin them further, but it _would_ have been a good opportunity for a trap. He’s hung around Monty enough to learn how to make something devious seem innocent. Clarke opens it carefully, and at the sight of the chocolate cake and the icing that says TRUCE in elegant script, her eyebrows raise and some of the tension leaves her shoulders. 

“I’ve been thinking a lot about… time,” Bellamy says carefully. “And circles, and second chances. And I’m too old to have a nemesis, Clarke.”

A surprised laugh bursts out of her throat. 

“I’m serious,” Bellamy says, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I can do friendly competition, but my face can’t take another volleyball.”

“That was an accident!” Clarke hisses, leaning forward over her desk.

“Uh huh - “

“Fine, the room booking thing, the reason I signed up for trivia - I wanted to get under your skin,” Clarke says. “But the volleyball was an actual accident, honest.”

“Well, I can take the cake back then - “ Bellamy says, reaching for the box. He’s joking, but Clarke still yanks it closer to her and hugs it protectively. 

“No,” she says. “I accept the truce.” She swallows hard, and several emotions play out across her face, just familiar enough to Bellamy that he wants to sit and comfort her, and just alien enough to remind him he doesn’t quite know her anymore. He’s about to turn and go when Clarke calls out -"I'm sorry." He stops in the doorway. "I didn't... I didn't expect a fairytale reunion, of course, but I panicked, when I saw you at the gala and you felt like a stranger."

"I did too," Bellamy says softly.

“There’s forks in the lounge, I think. If you want to have cake now.”

He turns, and the naked hope on her face isn’t unfamiliar at all. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That would be nice.”

So Clarke takes her coat off and he follows her to the lounge, which is a closet with two couches and a microwave that is slightly smaller than the closet that is the Classics department’s lounge, and they sit and start eating the cake straight out of the box together. Clarke is close enough that he can feel her warmth against his arm every time she bumps him with her elbow, and there’s an odd peace to this that he was missing this whole time since their reunion. 

She tells him everything she’s been up to since she graduated (quite a lot, by the sounds of it) and Bellamy tells her everything he’s been up to (much less, comparatively, but he’s happy like this, he likes the cycle of seasons and semesters and students that pass through his life only briefly on their way to their dreams.)

“Why did you come back?” Bellamy asks, as they’re caught up and Clarke is rubbing at a smear of chocolate on her cheek. 

“Well,” she says softly, dropping her gaze. “There was a professor who encouraged me when I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and if it was the right path, and I never forgot that. And I wanted to be that professor for someone else, too. I didn’t know if you were still here. I could have looked you up, but I was afraid I’d chicken out if I didn’t like the answer, so I didn’t. But I hoped you’d be here. I hoped you’d still be Bellamy.”

Bellamy reaches out to her chin, gently and slowly enough that she has plenty of time to retreat, and tilts her head up. He thinks he’s the one who leans in first, but she meets him halfway, her mouth soft and warm and smiling against his. The next few minutes they spend kissing until Lincoln walks in and starts very loudly making coffee are the best he’s had in years.

**v.**

Clarke lives in a tiny duplex northwest of campus. Her bedroom window opens out onto a creaky old oak tree that is Bellamy’s usual way in, because even if he’s not technically her professor right now, they both know that defense is like playing with fire. They don’t talk about that, when they meet. They talk about everything but the way she has to sneak him in, or the way they have to walk past each other on campus like they’re just friendly acquaintances. 

But when he’s with her it’s so easy to feel safe and forget all the reasons he shouldn’t feel so at home in her bed. Her room is warm and dim, lit only by a string of christmas lights strung up from one corner of the ceiling to another. The sheets smell like her, and maybe a little bit like him, and he is warm and drowsy and he thinks he’s going to fall asleep here, on his stomach with Clarke’s fingertrips trailing lazy designs over his bare back.

Then the mattress shifts as she sits up and clambers over him. 

Bellamy raises his head and makes a questioning murmur though, really, he can’t complain about the view. Clarke stands with her back to him in front of her easel, naked and utterly at ease with it, her hair tumbling down her back in tangled curls. 

“This is missing something,” she says absently, and Bellamy rolls onto his side and watches with amusement as she pins her hair up and starts pulling paints out of the drawer. The painting she’s currently working on is some kind of sunburst of gold foil at the center fading into black at the edges like a racing tunnel. 

“What inspired this one?” Bellamy asks, his gaze wandering between the painting and the enticing curve of her back as she mixes a new colour onto her palette. Clarke bites her lip and adds another dab of yellow before holding the palette up to compare it with the canvas. “I can hide my head under the pillow, if you want to turn the lights on.”

“No, no,” Clarke says, throwing him a smile over her shoulder. “This sets the mood. What do you think it’s about?”

Bellamy squints at the sunburst design. 

“It’s either something happy or the heat death of the universe,” he says confidently.

“Close,” she says with a smirk. “It’s an orgasm.”

Bellamy tilts his head and looks at it again. “Is this a positive review?” he asks, and her wink is answer enough. He watches her face as she paints an electric blue zigzag down the middle, her hand so steady and sure. When she paints, the hard lines of her face soften, and he gets glimpses of a girl underneath who forgets, just for a moment, to feel responsible for the entire world.

“It’s beautiful,” he says quietly. “I never gave modern art much thought, before you. You changed everything.”

“I don’t like that it’s called modern art,” Clarke muses, touching up some of her edges. “It’s _present_. It makes people think of modern and ancient as binary opposites instead of two points along a continuous spectrum.”

“Oh?” Bellamy prods, raising an eyebrow. 

“Maybe in another three thousand years, people will look at our modern art the same way they look at your black-figure amphoras,” Clarke says with a cheeky grin. 

“I wouldn’t hate that,” Bellamy says thoughtfully, catching on to what she’s trying to say. He falls silent as a floorboard in the hallway creaks. 

“Clarke?” her roommate calls out. “Who do you have in there?”

Clarke drops her palette and paintbrush onto her desk with a clatter and throws her blankets over Bellamy’s head. 

“No one!” she yells. “I’m listening to a podcast.”

“All right!” the roommate calls back. “I’m headed to bed, good night!”

After they hear her footsteps retreat up the hall, Bellamy pulls the blankets off his head and looks at her. 

“I should go,” he says, and Clarke does not disagree. She cleans up her paintbrushes as he dresses, and comes to kiss him goodbye at the window still naked. Bellamy trails his hand down her ribcage as he lingers in the kiss. “You have goosebumps,” he says against her lips. 

“Your fault,” Clarke murmurs. 

“Is that your excuse to not wear clothes?” he kisses her again, because he doesn’t want to go, not really, and it’s a good excuse to draw out the moment. “You could come over this weekend,” he says. “We could sleep in. I’ll make you breakfast, you could bring something to work on and I’ll read a book or do some marking - “ he loses himself for a moment imagining it, the two of them relaxing in his living room without having to listen for her roommate coming home, how it would feel to wake up with her. 

How it would feel to be able to tell the whole world he loves her.

“We’ll see,” Clarke says. “I have a lot of deadlines coming up.”

Her smile, when he finally climbs over the windowsill to go, is sadder than it usually is.

**x.**

Clarke slips into the auditorium at the tail end of a lecture on Carthage, and Bellamy trails off halfway through his sentence, staring up at her familiar silhouette in the back row.

He's silent long enough that his students turn around in their seats and crane their necks to see what's distracted him. Clarke raises her hands in surrender as over a hundred pairs of eyes settle on her.

"You didn't have to stop lecturing!" she calls out with a huff of laughter.

"It's too late to start again now," Bellamy says, "The entire auditorium is going to be more curious about why you're here than Carthage. Unless," and he snaps his fingers, "We have a pop quiz next Wednesday."

There are giggles and a few sounds of outrage from the seats.

"No, but really, what's up?" he asks Clarke.

She reaches into her tote bag and pulls out a tupperware. "You forgot your lunch," she says, sounding a little affronted.

There's a dramatic gasp from the end of the 3rd row.

"Professor Blake!" one of his students exclaims. "Are you and Professor Griffin _dating?_ "

Bellamy glances up to the back of the room, where Clarke is grinning widely. His first instinct it to deny it, to shy away from the attention. But he loves her, and he loves that smile on her face right now, and they don't have to hide anything anymore. He weighs the captivated silence of the auditorium as he deliberates.

"We were until recently," he admits after a moment. "We're actually married now."

Delighted shrieks and 'awws' echo across the auditorium. Over the commotion, another students yells out: "I knew it! I fucking knew it! Pay up!"

Clarke covers her mouth with her hand, her shoulders shaking with laughter. "You guys made _bets_ on Bellamy's love life? Oh, god, that's adorable."

Bellamy crosses his arms and leans back against the podium, trying hard to look like he still has some dignity left in life.

"I've decided," he announces, loud enough to be heard over the whispers and giggles. "That you're all a bunch of hooligans, and we _are_ having a pop quiz. Do your readings and stop speculating on my personal life. Class dismissed."

Clarke waits until his students have packed up and are streaming outside to saunter down the stairs and sit on his podium, pushing his notes to the side. Bellamy gives her a glare that doesn't have any real heat behind it and tidies up.

"Sooo," Clarke says. "Since I ruined your lecture and you're free for lunch early... want to have a picnic behind the library?"

Bellamy sighs and manages to hold a disappointed face for about 60 seconds before his smile breaks through. "I'd love to," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Happy holidays again!
> 
> If you are an irl ancient civilizations or modern art major and I horribly misrepresented your area of expertise, pls forgive, I am but a humble stem major. D: I flailed my way through this entire fic feeling like that one scene in B99 where Amy's trying to be cultured so she's like, _hummus. thoughts?_
> 
> [Black-figure amphoras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-figure_pottery) was the best name I could find for that like, super distinctive ochre-and-black style of ancient Greek pottery. Clarke's speech about modern art instillation being really hostile for viewers is partially inspired by a tumblr post that was going around recently that I unfortunately have not been able to track down, if anyone has a link, please comment or message me so I can credit it properly!
> 
> This was pretty heavily based on my own uni experience re: faculty rivalries and funding squabbles, and being in a faculty small enough that profs knew most of us by name and regularly like, played board games with us and asked us to feed their chickens when they were on vacation. Also, post-covid if you ever do find yourself staying on campus for the holidays when all your friends have gone home, ask around esp in the international student community because people will host lil parties like Roan's. Shoutout to my local rabbi for making a bizarre amount of soup and wandering around campus looking for sad students to feed and inspiring that scene. Oh, god, can you imagine Roan as a rabbi? I will leave you with that mental image. <3


End file.
